“One of the central revelations of the film is, I think, (a breakdown of) the ecosystem, the connective tissue,” said David Fanning, “Frontline” executive producer, during a recent interview. “The statements being made by the mayor, by the chief of police, the media, the hype that was going on about shootings. False reports that were coming back, the governor’s very strong statement about the National Guard, the loose use of martial law, and the interpretation on the local level by captains and others in local districts that the normal rules of engagement had been shifted in favor of shooting looters.

“There’s no question that that seems to be the backdrop (for the incidents).”

Though several cases are examined, the focus of the “Frontline” report is the death of Henry Glover, whose remains were discovered inside a burned-out car near the west bank of the Mississippi River not far from where two others had sought medical care for his gunshot wound at a temporary NOPD compound.

“When I got there, I thought they was going to help us,” says Edward King, Glover’s brother, during the episode. “But all I hear is, ‘Get out of the car.’ So I’m hollering, ‘My brother’s shot. He’s shot.’ The first thing they did was put us in handcuffs. And I’m like, ‘Why? We’re coming for help.’”

The collaboration that resulted in tonight’s report represents “a cultural shift” in how some stories are reported, Fanning said.

A couple of them, actually. The multi-newsroom approach is one.

“We’ve been used to it because we’ve done co-productions for years with newspapers and with other broadcasters,” he said. “Television’s a much more collaborative medium, so we’re pretty experienced at managing those relationships.

“It requires a sophisticated level of common ground, that you’re all reaching for the same kinds of (goals), holding each other to the same standards. In the end, co-productions and collaborations are never made between institutions, they’re only made between individuals. If individuals trust each other and respect each other, then they work.”

Another cultural shift is the transparent reporting the project has employed for the past several months. Mini-reports, both print and video, have been archived online at a combined website. Also there are printable fliers seeking witnesses to various events.

“We’ve been working over time on doing progressive reporting on the web, as well as moving toward broadcast,” Fanning said. “Just as newspapers publish stories (that are) pieces of an ongoing story, so too in television journalism we could be doing stuff like that.

“We did some fairly sophisticated narratives on our website. The five stories we were referencing all the time, and updating it with the breaking news as it went along, and moving toward a place where we began to say, ‘This is time to start pulling the story together.’

“It was sort of a first attempt to say, ‘These are (reporting) possibilities for the future.’”